Interview: Rechat CEO Shayan Hamidi & Leading RE’s Robin LaSure

At the heart of the lively LeadingRE 2023 Global Symposium in Dubai, Rechat’s CEO, Shayan Hamidi sat down with LeadingRE’s Vice President of Global Communications, Robin LaSure, for a down-to-earth chat. Set against the backdrop of the event, their conversation sheds light on how Rechat and LeadingRE are coming together to make things simpler and better for real estate agents, including the addition of AI (Artificial Intelligence) to the industry.

Rechat was proud to sponsor the Gala Reception at the event, and looks forward to continuing to celebrate new partnerships with LeadingRE members. 

Watch the interview here:

Transcript of the Interview:

Robin LaSure:
Hi, I’m Robin with LeadingRE and I’m here with Shayan Hamidi CEO of Rechat and we’re at our Global Symposium in Dubai. First, I want to thank you for being a sponsor here this week and for sponsoring our Gala Awards reception last night, which was lovely and amazing, so, thank you for that. And I want to talk to you a little bit about what you do and how your product can help our members. We were really excited to bring you on as a Solutions Group partner recently. So tell us a little bit about what your company does and how it can support our members.

Shayan Hamidi:
Sure! Thanks, Robin, and the whole LeadingRE team. It’s been great being part of this. So as you mentioned we joined in August, so very new to the family, it’s been very welcoming. It’s been a great experience so far. The event here was awesome. So I actually attended the March event that you had in Vegas, and I think this year is gonna be in February, right? So, very different than what we experienced here, actually. I found this to be very intimate,  a smaller group, you know? I mean, honestly, three things stood out to me, one was how intimate it was. They had that family kind of vibe and everybody was here to connect, which I think is a very strong and it really, I think the second thing that was really shining shining through was how the global reach of LeadingRE I think it was a very great presentation of seeing all the different representations across the world that you have. That was really just coming through. I mean, you were sitting through session after session and just looking at all the different parts of the world, and how you guys have touched that, which was, which was fascinating. And I think that I think the group that showed up, you know, and, and obviously, what we were excited about joining LeadingRE was that you can tell it’s a great group, obviously great brands, really strong operators and that’s what a lot of our focus has been. So, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you for inviting us. You’ve been awesome. The whole group has been great, Jack has been fantastic, great. So, he’s fun, which is always good. And so that’s been great.

Shayan:
So with respect to what Rechat does, it’s a Super App, it’s AI-powered. So what we like to think of, is it’s a mobile platform for agents and brokers and we really simplify things. By Super App, we mean that we bring in a whole bunch of different experiences into one app, right? So all of your marketing, that social media marketing, email marketing, video creation, websites, all of that comes into one product, all of your relationship management and then all of your transactions. So it’s the first time you have all three components in one app instead of using 10, 12 different products. And as you mentioned, it’s been resonating well, with a lot of kind of your brands, which is, which is really important to us because there’s a lot of high synergy that we have. We focus on luxury, a lot. We have a lot of great luxury brands. We focus on more of the operators locally, we get into that. So it’s great.

Robin:
And your product is available everywhere.

Shayan:
It is, a lot of our focus has historically been on us and Canada, but we’re kind of starting to offer more services globally.

Robin:
Great, great. And I know AI is a big part of what you’re doing and, and we hear a lot about that everywhere you go. And we talked about it a lot this week. So there are some people who love it and are excited about it. Other people are very fearful of it. So what would you say to Realtors who are just trying to understand it and its implications for their business.

Shayan:
Yeah, I think it’s a couple of thoughts. One is that I think AI is very real: This is not a trend. This is a real solution that’s helping today in many different ways. The way we see it, I know a lot of folks may think of it as potentially being used in different types of roles, whether it’s within real estate or anywhere else. We see it as a way that you augment your abilities, right? It really helps you be faster. I use it all the time every day, what I’m writing or creating content or whatever I’m doing and take advantage of what, what I can do with AI. It makes me faster, it makes me better. And so what we’ve done is we’ve partnered with ChatGPT and a bunch of other companies, and we are really taking, we’re getting the models to understand real estate and create a copilot for the agent. So a lot of the work you need to do on your own, the product can do for you and, and you can focus on your relationships.

Robin:
That’s great. Thank you. Any closing remarks? Any top takeaways you have for us from this week?

Shayan:
Well, I thought this was great. We’re excited about it. So I, I think, you know, that the event you have in Vegas that’s upcoming is a very different event, right? It’s a much bigger crowd that shows up, and so we’re excited about that as well. I think they all have different flavors. And I think this was a great opportunity opportunity for us to get to know a lot of the operators and a lot of the partners that you have within the network because, you know, it’s always relationship-first and this is helping us to actually understand, introduce ourselves in a, in a more welcoming way and, and have them understand how we can help them. So, that’s it.

Robin:
Well, great, great. Well, thank you for being here, and we’ll include your contact information in this post so everyone can get in touch with you, and thank you again.

Shayan:
Absolutely. Thank you, Robin.